Thursday, May 17, 2012

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM and Secular Humanism

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM

Dialectical Materialism is a Marxist application of Hegelian logic called dialectics. It was argued that while Hegel developed his philosophy within the tradition of German idealism, what was needed was to use the logical system of the dialectical method within a modified approach of materialism. Dialectical Materialism then would be set up as a counter to both German idealism and French materialism.
It was argued that all philosophical systems were set in a specific historical and cultural frame of reference, and represented the real economic, social and political interests of a specific class or interest group within that historical cultural time frame. Idealism being defined roughly “in the beginning was the word” or that consciousness comes first and all else follows, and materialism being founded upon empirical and scientific investigations of an external and material reality. Among early Marxists it was argued that idealism was a contrivance in the hands of the wealthy and powerful. This theology was used against those who were victims of that rule. Idealism focuses attention away from the real causes of their suffering.
All materialism is founded upon the scientific method. There were two classes who benefited from the materialist philosophy in modern times. Those classes would be capitalist and workers. Science grew rapidly during the in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. This was the same time that modern capitalism also developed rapidly. Both science and capitalism, in the modern sense, began in Britain and Western Europe and rapidly spread to all parts of the planet. Both capitalist and workers were a creation of capitalism. There was a clear relationship between capitalism and science. Both the capitalists and labor organizations would use science for their own ends. The capitalist would embrace a positivist’s variety of materialism and the workers were attracted to dialectical materialism.
Idealism argues that all movement, change and reality begin in the world of ideas and historical substance reflects this. Also idealism not only reflects the position that history reflects human consciousness, but the universe is a creation of divine consciousness. Materialism assumes there is an external reality that is independent of our consciousness. We are born into a world that already exists and will continue to exist long after we are gone. Through careful observation and systematic studies we can gain a clearer understanding of that reality.
Idealism has its roots deep in human history, even before class society, with a dread and admiration of nature and natural events beyond our command. Animism along with spiritual or divine forces and magic were used as a protection against the fates. Even after the establishment of class societies powerful people strove to keep superstation alive in order to keep the toiling masses passive. Science, which began with the ancient Greeks, but remained stagnant, throughout much of the Roman period and throughout the middle ages. Not until the time when rank based upon birth would be challenged was science really to take off.
Science looks to external and material reality. Through careful observation and study we learn of existing patterns in nature. When these patterns are understood we can better design our strategies based upon real scientific principles letting us have more supervision over the physical outcome of our lives. Not prayers, magic, incantations or even fatalism but scientific determinism gives us more freedom not less.
Dialectical Materialism is also about change. Dialectical Materialism begins with the notion that everything in the Universe is ultimately material and this material substance is always in motion and constantly changing. The universe, the earth, nature, human communities are natural and; thus a part of a concrete development that is constantly evolving in an endless tendency of transformation. All understanding begins with the observation of matter in motion and constant change. According to Engels all of nature is constantly coming into existence. While this happens all of existence is continually becoming extinct. From the decay of the old order the new order is born, evolution is a daily process. Insignificant and hardly noticeable quantitative changes happening day after day until enough strain is built up and then the change becomes more rapid than ever. The sun explodes destroying the solar system creating the raw material for a new solar system in the future.
Everything is made up of internal contradictions. The old is breaking down while the new is being formed. As Engels outlines it, the process begins with the law of unity and the conflict of opposites. Then there is the slow accumulation of quantitative changes that appear over time, until there is a final breakdown; which are followed by rapid qualitative change and the birth of something new. Finally, the law of the negation-of-the-negation occurs, which is based upon the Hegelian "triad" of thesis-antithesis-new thesis.
To attain the expected accomplishments through our actions we must bring our ideas into conformity with laws of the actual physical and social world. Knowledge cannot be separated from practice. Theory guides our practice and from our practical activity theories develop. Morality is tied both to our subjective needs and our objective understanding of our universe. Through this connection between the theory and practice our actions lead to more authority over our lives. In this way both the objective and subjective manifestations of our needs can be understood and dealt with. Through a deeper understanding of the universal and the specifics of our humanity and our struggles we can gain an understanding of the basic nature of our existence in its entirety, along with the internal links and the inherent arrangement of things in our environment. By way of inductive understanding and deduction we are able to formulate reasonable insights based upon our discoveries. From these insights our morality is formed and not divinely revealed.
Physicalism, or logical positivism begins with the statement that things in the world around us can be understood through the use of science and mathematics. Religion, ethics and metaphysics are meaningless. Anything that cannot be demonstrated through observation or proven through experimentation, logical deduction is simply a matter of opinion with no real content.
Historical Materialism, which is the sociological application of Dialectical Materialism, is meant to be a guide to social action. Three themes relate historical materialism to social action. They are materialism, action, and freedom. Action within nature is central to movement. Freedom through action is central to liberation and sovereignty. By way of action, we continuously alter the orchestration we have with nature. Given this, preexisting but changing boundaries limit freedom. Frontiers we cannot transgress include the physical universe, biology, ecology, social arrangements, technology, populations, organization, social design and the mode of production. Theory leads to action, from action comes theory, freedom, determinism and moral choice. This interaction cannot be separated. Natural history, which consists of geology and biology, is in inseparable unity with human, sociology, anthropology and psychology taken together.
People participate through conscious choices on the changes affecting their lives, even when those choices are limited by an objective reality people have little control over. At every turn choice cannot be avoided, it is the alternatives that are determined ahead of time. Once a choice is made the environment is forever altered creating a new set of predetermined options in the future. This is the heart of Historical Materialism uniting theory and action. This soft determinism can be modified with better knowledge of the environment. This includes the reality that social action is not a moral imperative, but an unavoidable veracity.
Marx used the concept that there are real regularities in nature and society, which are independent of our consciousness. This reality is in motion, and this motion itself has patterned consistencies that can be observed and understood within our consciousness. This material uniformity changes over time. For Marx, tensions within the very structure of this reality form the basis of this change; this is called dialectics. These changes accumulate until the structure itself is something other than the original organization. Finally, a new entity is formed with its own tensions or contradictions.
Four points unite classical Marxism with Secular Humanism. The first in alliance with Naturalism the earth is a mid-size planet in a minor solar system with only one sun. This solar system is lost towards the edges of a modest size galaxy with billons of sun many with solar systems. Millions of galaxies make up a galaxy strings and millions of these strings make up a cluster, and of course etc.
Next Philosophical Materialism teaches us that human beings are first and foremost an integral part of this earth. At each and every point there is an interacting part of nature and a natural ecosystem. Humans are physical, social and cultural animals and like any other species interconnected with their environment in an active way adapting to and changing and readapting the natural world. Through labor people connect with nature to take from nature what is needed to survive. Then by working with other people altering resources taken from nature into products that are used to live. In the process people also create connections with each other creating society, culture and the personality of the individual.
Humanism allows us to see our commonly shared humanity. The commonality transcends history, culture or the limitations of scriptures.
Finally primacy of the poor, preeminence of the humble people, class struggle and “working class” resistance to exploitation. To identify with the impoverished and the disadvantaged is to make common cause with those left out of the daylight of hope. Toilers who create all wealth in which those who generate this wealth live without sharing in the prosperity and forced to live in a in a deep subterranean tunnel of despair with no way out except changing all of the economic and political relations of society.
All ethics are situational ethics. That moral codes are embedded in a particular historical and cultural setting. Moral codes represent the interests of a particular class in that setting, and often are presented as a general and universal truth. In fact one class will benefit more than the existing competing classes. This is not to say all moral codes are equivalent. The larger the classes protected by the principled instructions on life the closer it comes to also protecting the humanitarian concerns of the opposing classes, as well a offering a chance for liberation to the classes suffering oppression.
We are coming closer to understanding the basis of a “proletarian” ethic, the class of a wage earner’s moral guidelines. A community of individuals, in which individuality is more fully realized through the near complete rejection of egoistic individualism, is now realized. This is a situation of mutual aid between members of the community, and a reciprocal confirmation, with an innate reflectively inspired interaction between this community and nature.
As soon as the worker becomes alienated from work, from the product, from nature and from other people labor becomes a labor of personal sacrifice, of humiliation. Under this set of circumstances someone must suffer so someone may benefit.
Only under the state of affairs of mutual aid flanked by citizens of the nation, abided by a common validation, with an inborn thoughtfully educated communication connecting this group of people and natural world can humanity move to a more complete morality. This does not mean that any ethical system can be achieved before the material preconditions for its insights exists in the historical and social environment.
At each stage in our analysis of morality it will be noted, that goals are nothing to be jeered at as a basis of ethics. While end and means interact, morality does not predate the material reality that gives rise to it. There cannot be any other meaningful ethics other than situational ethics. Eternal truths and universal ethics are both dogmatic and dictatorial as well as corrupt and unprincipled.

Marxism like all Humanism acknowledges our commonly shared humanity as the ultimate source of reason, understanding, ethics and social justice without reference to the supernatural, magic, the spirit world or other canons and fables.

Before we can attain a more universal ethical code moving from family to clan to tribe to nation to humanity and finally to the living planet we needed to attain a material reality that is based upon an increasing interdependence that we are aware of an ever larger community. If our world consciousness stops with the next mountain range we will not develop a humanist worldview. If the capitalist income is derived from the labor of others surplus value and economic equality is seen only as a Marxist emblematic fairy tales. From the view of the wageworker socialism, communism, worker councils, worker self-management, and the cooperative commonwealth federation frees the worker and the capitalist.

Sources Used and Further Readings:

Afanaslev, A. G. (1987) Dialectical Materialism International Publishers

Afanaslev, A. G. (1987) Historical Materialism International Publishers

Berman, Marshall (1963) Freedom and Fetishism

Cameron, Kenneth Neill (1995) Dialectical Materialism and Modern Science New York International Publishers

Raya Dunayevskaya, (1965) ‘Marx’s Humanism Today’ Socialist Humanism, edited by Erich Fromm (New York: Doubleday)

Engels, Frederick (1935) Ludwig Feurbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy International Publishers

Engels, Frederick (1975) Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State New York International Publishers

Engels, Frederick (1977) Dialectics of Nature New York International Publishers

Engels, Frederick (1978) Anti-During New York International Publishers

Feuerbach, Ludwig (1989) The Essence of Christianity Prometheus

Godeler, Maurice (1977) Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology Cambridge University Press

Hegel, G. W. F. (1979) Phenomenology of Spirit Oxford University Press

Hegel, G. W. F. (1990) The Philosophy of History Prometheus Books

Hegel, G. W. F. (2005) Philosophy of Right Dover Publications

Lenin, V.I. (1970) Materialism and Empiriocriticism Peking, Foreign Language Press

Lukacs, Georg (1968) History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics Cambridge

Luxemburg, Rosa The Accumulation of Capital Monthly Review

Marx, Karl (1964) The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 International Publishers

Marx, Karl (1994) Early Political Writings Edited by Joseph O’Malley Cambridge

Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels (1970) The German Ideology. New York International Publishers

Mao Tse-Tung (1965) Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung Volume I On Contradictions Foreign Language Press

Novack, George (1971) An Introduction to the Logic of Marxism Pathfinder Press

Trotsky, Leon (1939) The ABC of Materialist Dialectics in From A Petit-bourgeois Opposition in the Socialist Workers Party Dec 15 1939

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Educational Bureau (1974)The Fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy Moscow

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